Indian Ocean: Our songs are long because we want to convey a lot of things

The band, who recently released the 11-minute-long rendition of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Akhiyan Udeek Diyan, explains why the length of majority of their tracks, barring a few film songs, is longer than the average track length of the songs released by other musicians.

Apart from their timeless music, if Indian Ocean is known for any other thing, it is the length of their songs. The bands popular tracks including Bandeh, Kandisa and Ma Rewa, among many others are more than five -minutes long. Unlike several musicians and acts, who over the time compromised on their track length, the Delhi-based band, has never compromised on it.

Indian Ocean have released an eleven-minute-long rendition of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan’s Akhiyan Udeek Diyan.

“We will never compromise with the timing of it. I feel that this entire thing where people say that track length is been shortened because the audiences’ attention span is shorter is bu****t. It is a concept driven by Western labels and no corporates here are doing the same in order to impress them,” says the band’s bassist Rahul Ram.

“ I don’t like to judge the audience like that. Who is anyone to say that the audiences’ attention span is short?” he adds.

The five-member band has recently released their rendition of the popular song by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Akhiyan Udeek Diyan, which is eleven minutes long. Rahul explains that the rationale behind making long songs is to be able to convey “lots” of things.

“We don’t make long songs on purpose. We make it because we have lots of stuff to convey. I mean if you want to only sing a line like chaar bottle vodka, and that’s your entire song, then fair enough you start your song with it. There’s nothing wrong with it. But, we want to build up a song, take them through a journey,” he says.

“Just like Pink Floyd’s Time. The song starts with the sound of a clock ticking, and that goes on for 32 bars, and then you hear the drumroll and then they start singing the song. As a listener you are hooked on with that tik tok and you want to know where this goes. That’s an experience, which is what we also want to do through our music,” Rahul adds.

Talking about their latest release Rahul says, “This song as well, has just borrowed that little chorus sung by Nusrat Saab. Rest of it is all our work and our rendition to this great song. Its an eleven minute song. I am sorry (laughs), but there was a lot to tell through this rendition.”

The band, who has been in the industry for over 30 years, went up two major line up changes after the death of Asheem in 2009, and departure of the popular guitarist Sushmit Sen in 2013. Rahul says the band is still trying to figure out their new sound, and understands that they haven’t been able to release new music.

“After Sushmit left, we did [the album] Tandanu , but that was in collaboration with seven artists who obviously had a huge influence on the album. We released Masaan’s music, but that was film music, which was situational and were shorter in length as well. There were a few film albums that we were involved in but then those films got shelved. Then, we are still figuring out, Indian Ocean 2.0 and the sound of it. I know it has taken some time, but, by the end of the year, we should be able to release some new music,” he says.

Another reason, why Indian Ocean wasn’t able to make new music was live shows, which have now completely dried up because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. The band realises that for the next six months, live concerts will not be a possibility, and they are trying to find ways to make money. One of them is through online concerts.

We recently did two lives from our Facebook page, to see how many people were actually interested in watching us live. What we are planning is that after this lockdown ends, all five of us can come together for a live concert, and do it virtually. And ask people to pay for it,” he says.

“There has to be a way to monetise all these free online concerts that are happening all around the world. We artists, don’t have a PF. Whatever money we make, its through work, which has completely dried up. There are no live shows. Films have been stalled, so no one is making any new music either. So the way right now for anyone to make money is through online concerts,” he signs off.